Our View: Night dredging comes to an end

The dredging being done to prepare the Acushnet River bed for the new South Terminal heavy-lift bulkhead is complete and work will now turn toward main construction.

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southcoasttoday.com

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Posted Jan. 17, 2014 at 12:01 AM

Posted Jan. 17, 2014 at 12:01 AM

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The dredging being done to prepare the Acushnet River bed for the new South Terminal heavy-lift bulkhead is complete and work will now turn toward main construction.

This news will please Fairhaven residents living on the river who have been subject to the disruptive night dredging.

The plan to rapidly construct the terminal for expanded freight service and create the most advanced infrastructure for deployment of offshore turbines required the intense schedule.

Fairhaven residents deserve thanks for their patience from the contractors, terminal owners Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and the city of New Bedford, which will receive the greatest benefit from the completed facility.

If the terminal's promise is realized, Fairhaven will also benefit, as will the whole region, when long-term, well-paying jobs bring prosperity.

As has been stated before, there is still a long way to go between a work in progress and — as the turbine developers like to say — steel in the water, but the multi-use terminal will drive the economy in the right direction.

The blasting that has accompanied the dredging has been minimally intrusive, as well, registering lower on the Richter Scale than the recent Great SouthCoast Earthquake of 2014, which weighed in at 1.9 and left the region shaken, but not stirred. A review of recent Standard-Times and SouthCoastToday.com archives reveals anecdotal evidence that the quake was like "a big truck," while the blasting "didn't even feel like a bus."

Levity aside, it is good to see rapid progress, with support from every level of government. It is good to see forward-thinking development with the certainty of greater employment opportunities.

Dredging operations by the Environmental Protection Agency to clean the Superfund site that is the river bed will continue, but that work is restricted to business hours. The upcoming work on the South Terminal requires no night operations, so we hope our Fairhaven neighbors can look upon their brief inconvenience with gratitude that it's over, that it was done relatively quickly and that it will have been for the good of the whole region.